1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an outline information generating apparatus for generating outline information obtained from a group of information items and a computer-readable recording medium recording thereon an outline information generating program, and more particularly to an outline information generating apparatus for generating outline information on the outline of activities performed on workspaces in an environment for manipulating electronic resources and a computer-readable recording medium recording thereon an outline information generating program.
2. Description of the Related Art
The advancement of network technology has enabled persons separated by a spatial distance, an organizational barrier or a time differential to work together. As a tool for the exchange of information between such separated co-workers, e-mails are extensively used. Especially the capability of the e-mail system to simultaneously send the same message to more than one recipient is a useful feature for maintaining communication with plural counterparts. However, there remains the problem that in exchanging e-mails in an actual situation of co-working, it is difficult to inform one another of the progress of the respective co-workers"" jobs. It takes much trouble to write an e-mail in such a manner that the progress of one""s job, which the partners would spontaneously know if working physically together, can be accurately communicated to those spatially distant from the sender. Furthermore, for the recipient to understand the stage of progress at which the e-mail was written, he or she has to remember the contents of the e-mails exchanged in the past in addition to the background of the currently received e-mail. The greater the number of co-workers becomes, the greater the number of e-mails to be received increases, and accordingly the greater the labor to respond adequately is required.
As an arrangement to support joint work, a workflow system is known. The workflow system, as its processing is based on the definition of the flow of work, is difficult to apply to a work procedure of which the flow is prevented from clear definition by many exceptions involved or any other similar reason, and can hardly uniformly support workers performing a variety of miscellaneous tasks in parallel.
In view of these problems, the following two methods are conceived to keep track of activities by persons in spatially distant locations.
By a first method using working environments known as workspaces, co-workers can notify one another of the progress of their respective tasks without having to take extra trouble for the exchange of information. A workspace is an environment for supporting smooth progress of the performance of a given project by collectively maintaining and managing resources required for it. Co-workers are enabled to know how one another""s task is progressing by watching state changes in a shared workspace and/or one another""s individual workspace. A Basic Support for Cooperative Work (BSCW) system now under study by GMD (National Research Center for Information Technology in Germany) allows each co-worker to know what some other co-workers did while he or she was unaware by presenting the records of operations in a shared working environment. Also, a workspace technique disclosed in the Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. Hei 10-31660 enables a co-worker to understand any work accomplished in a given workspace by recording and managing in a time series the history of its states and changes in it.
A second method is to enable a person to keep track of the activities of another person at a distance organizationally or physically by publishing them on a World Wide Web (WWW) page. While WWW is a technique having developed in an externally open Internet environment, it can as well be effectively utilized in a corporate or other closed network environment. By having each participating person or department publish the current state of its activities on a WWW page, the progress of the activities can be known among the participants without having to send a large number of e-mails to others as in a conventional e-mail system.
The WWW pages are written in a document description language known as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). Initially the discloser of information had to write a WWW page directly in this language, which made WWW page writing an extremely complex task. To eliminate this complexity, HTML editors including Adobe""s PageMill (trademark of Adobe Systems, U.S.) and Microsoft""s FrontPage (trademark of Microsoft Corporation, U.S.) were developed, which automatically generate HTML by editing operation like word processing. Use of an HTML editor simplifies WWW page preparation and editing, and can thereby reduce time taken to update the contents along with the progress of work.
Methods of the prior art, however, involve the following problems.
The problem with the first method described above is that, though it can be useful for co-workers having some knowledge of one another""s task, it does not allow mutual understanding among organizationally distant co-workers. Thus, sharing of a state on a workspace is like knowing the state of work progress from the state on the desk of the co-workers physically around. Therefore, a co-worker already knowing the background of the partners"" work may be able to know what and how the others are doing if they are spatially close to him or her, but not the jobs of organizationally or physically distant co-workers. For instance, if someone is developing software application, his or her colleague, a software engineer, can know the progress of the development by looking into a shared workspace. However, a marketing specialist, even if he or she looks into the shared workspace to find out when the product will become available for shipment, will find it impossible to know anything about the progress of the development unless the marketing person understands the programming language or the procedure of program development.
The problem with the second of the methods cited above is that, as a WWW page is manually prepared, timely updating of the page is not necessarily possible. The updating consumes much labor because it involves the task of arranging and putting information on the progress of activities readily understandable for everyone concerned. Moreover, since it is an auxiliary process to the regular activities of the person who updates the page, its priority lessens as the updating person becomes busier in his or her regular activities, with the consequence that sufficient information for joint work often is not made available to the co-workers.
Although the development of the HTML editors has facilitated the preparation of WWW pages, the WWW pages cannot serve the purpose if they are not updated after its creation. Timely updating of the page is required so that it can always reflect the latest state of activities. Inventions intended to reduce the trouble of updating a WWW page along with changes in activities include, for instance, an electronic mall system disclosed in the Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. Hei 9-330360. According to this invention, if a client keeping an electronic shop in the form of a WWW page on an electronic mall enters in advance its current state into a predetermined document, a WWW page reflecting its contents will be automatically generated. This enables the user to concentrate on its main activities, managing the electronic shop in this case, without worrying about WWW page updating, which is required outside the main activities. However, this method is applicable only where the range of information to be disclosed on the WWW page can be predetermined.
As noted above, according to the prior art, whether by using an e-mail or by opening a WWW page, a labor consuming task is required to make the state of activities known among co-workers. Moreover, since it is an auxiliary process to the regular activities of the person who updates the page, its priority lessens as the updating person becomes busier in his or her regular activities, with the consequence that sufficient information for joint work often is not made available to the co-workers. On the other hand, while it is possible to facilitate sharing of knowledge on the state of work progress by using workspaces, this advantage is available only to closely cooperating partners. Automatic updating of a WWW page by preparing a document into which only such information as needs to be published is entered can be applied merely to tasks for which the items to be published can be determined in advance.
In view of the problems noted above, the present invention provides an outline information generating apparatus capable of automatically generating a document outlining any work that has been done on a workspace.
The present invention also provides a computer-readable recording medium recording thereon an outline information generating program for causing a computer to automatically generate a document outlining any work that has been done on a workspace.
In order to solve the problems described above, according to the present invention, the outline information generating apparatus has a workspace editing part for altering the most latest state of a workspace by manipulating the electronic resources on the workspace as instructed by a user, a workspace history managing part for holding as history information the contents and objects of manipulation performed by the workspace editing part on the workspace, a synthesis rule holding part for holding synthesis rules prescribing rules on the synthesis of history information, and a synthesizing part for synthesizing, in accordance with the synthesis rules held by the synthesis rule holding part, the history information managed by the workspace history managing part and generating outline information.
Such an outline information generating apparatus stores in advance synthesis rules fitting the intended purpose in the synthesis rule holding part, and synthesizes with the synthesizing part required information by processing history information held by the workspace history managing part in accordance with the synthesis rules, resulting in the generation of outline information.
Further in order to solve others of the problems described above, the present invention provides a computer-readable recording medium recording thereon an outline information generating program for generating information on the outline of activities performed on a workspace, which is an environment for manipulating electronic resources. The program causes the computer to function as a workspace editing part for altering the latest state of a workspace by manipulating the electronic resources on the workspace as instructed by a user, a workspace history managing part for holding as history information the contents and objects of manipulation performed by the workspace editing part on the workspace, a synthesis rule holding part for holding synthesis rules prescribing rules on the synthesis of history information, and a synthesizing part for synthesizing, in accordance with the synthesis rules held by the synthesis rule holding part, the history information managed by the workspace history managing part and generating outline information.
By causing a computer to execute an outline information generating program recorded on such a recording medium, necessary functions for the above-described outline information generating apparatus are built up on the computer.